{"id":18572,"date":"2022-09-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=18572"},"modified":"2022-10-03T15:44:33","modified_gmt":"2022-10-03T13:44:33","slug":"in-a-nutshell-the-black-book-of-soviet-jewry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/2022\/09\/29\/in-a-nutshell-the-black-book-of-soviet-jewry\/","title":{"rendered":"In a nutshell: The Black Book of Soviet Jewry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u2022 <\/span>IN A NUTSHELL<\/span><\/strong><\/h4>\n\n
YOUR BRIEF EXPLAINER TO HISTORY\u2019S HOT TOPICS<\/span><\/h5>\n\n

The Black Book of Soviet Jewry<\/h2>\n\n

Words: Jonny Wilkes<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
A Jewish ghetto in Kharkiv, Ukraine, sealed off by barbed wire. The Nazis had it liquidated in early 1942 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

What Is the Black Book of Soviet Jewry<\/em>? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Also known as The <\/em>Complete <\/em>Black <\/em>Book <\/em>of <\/em>Russian <\/em>Jewry, <\/em>or simply the Black <\/em>Book, <\/em>it is a powerful document of the anti-Jewish atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis in eastern Europe, as well as the activities of Jewish members of resistance movements in occupied territories during World War II. <\/p>\n\n

By 1944, hundreds of survivor testimonies, accounts from victims\u2019 families, letters, diaries and other materials had been compiled by a team of journalists, led by Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, to fill the 500-page book. Now regarded as a landmark work on the Holocaust, the Black <\/em>Book <\/em>had a patchwork publication history for a number of decades. <\/p>\n\n

How did the project begin? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

As early as 1942, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee (JAC) in the Soviet Union expressed a wish to collect and publish evidence of Nazi anti-Semitism. Of the 6 million who ultimately perished in the Holocaust, a third were in eastern Europe; stories of brutal treatment and mass killings were rampant. After the war shifted in favour of the Allies in 1943, plans for such a publication got underway, with Ehrenburg and Grossman appointed as editors. <\/p>\n\n

\"\"
Fellow editor Ilya Ehrenburg, seen here in 1929, was also a renowned wartime journalist <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Who were Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Both born to Jewish families in Soviet Ukraine and both prominent war correspondents, the two men were dogged in the compiling of material<\/span> for the <\/span>Black Book. <\/em>Ehrenburg, a former Bolshevik as a teenager, had been a journalist in World War I, and witnessed the Russian Revolution, civil war and anti-Semitic pogroms. Having spent years in western Europe, he returned to the Soviet Union after World War II broke out and became a prolific and much-admired newspaper reporter.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

Grossman had initially trained as a chemical engineer, but turned to writing in the 1930s. He became a frontline journalist for the newspaper Red Star<\/em>, <\/em>covering the battles of Moscow, <\/span>Stalingrad, Kursk and, eventually, Berlin, and became one of the very first reporters to write about Nazi concentration camps. Of Treblinka, he would describe how \u201cthe earth ejects crushed bones, teeth, bits of paper and clothing; it refuses to keep its awful secret. These things emerge from the unhealed wounds in the earth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

\"\"
The book\u2019s co-editor, Vasily Grossman, pictured while following the Red Army\u2019s advance through Germany in 1945 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
\"\"
A man kneels in front of a mass grave before being shot by an SS death squad. The photograph is widely known by the title The Last Jew in Vinnitsa <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

What is in the Black Book<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Across its 500 pages, eyewitness accounts, affidavits and letters document the atrocities of the Holocaust, or Shoah <\/em>(Hebrew for \u2018catastrophe\u2019). These range from the brutal conditions in the ghettoes into which Jews were forced, to the mass killings and death camps seen all over the occupied territories. \u201cExecutions were carried out in identical fashion in places separated from each other by hundreds and even thousands of kilometres,\u201d writes Grossman. \u201cSuch total uniformity is evidence of secret instructions worked out in advance.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

The experiences related in the Black Book <\/em>are copious and horrific; some short and some long. The murder of Lyubov Mikhailovna Langman is one example. A gynaecologist from Belarus, she was being hidden with her 11-year-old daughter, but when she went to the aid of a woman having difficulty in childbirth she was betrayed to the Nazis. At first, Langman begged for her child to be spared, then \u201cshe clasped her daughter to herself and said: \u2018Shoot! I don\u2019t want her to live with you.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Then there is Pyotr Chepurenko\u2019s witnessing of the Piryatin Massacre of 1,600 Jews in April 1942, when he was forced by the Nazis to fill in the mass graves. \u201cScreams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbour, Ruderman, rise from under the soil,\u201d he says. \u201cHis eyes were bloody, and he was screaming: \u2018Finish me off!\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n

Page after page, story after story, the Black <\/em>Book <\/em>presents each account as a commemoration of the dead and as evidence against the Nazi regime. <\/p>\n\n

\u201cScreams and groans were coming from the pits. Suddenly I saw my neighbour, Ruderman, rise from under the soil\u2026 his eyes were bloody, and he was screaming\u201d <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

\"\"
An early copy of the Black Book<\/em>, which was denounced by some critics as being \u2018anti-Soviet\u2019 <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n

When was it first published? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Initially, Ehrenburg published some of the testimonies as a monograph, titled Murder <\/em>of <\/em>the <\/em>People, <\/em>before Yiddish publisher Der Emes printed the book, but only in partial form and after censorship. There were those who actually denounced the idea of the Black <\/em>Book <\/em>as anti-Soviet \u2013 claiming that by focusing on the suffering of the Jews, it undermined the hardships and tragedies that befell the population as a whole. Such a view was founded in the Soviet Union\u2019s own entrenched anti-Semitism, which eventually led to publication of the <\/span>Black <\/em>Book <\/em>being banned. The first edition was even destroyed, along with the typefaces and manuscript.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

So how has the Black Book<\/em> survived?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

Copies were sent to other countries and, in 1946, the United States, Romania and British-ruled Palestine (soon to be Israel) published their own edited versions. Certain documents and accounts were omitted in each one, however. Over the decades, further material was sent out of the Soviet Union, eventually leading to a truncated Russian-language edition, published in Jerusalem in 1980. It wouldn\u2019t be until the 1990s that the Russians had access to a full version of the <\/span>Black <\/em>Book. <\/em>That, it turned out, would be proofed by Ehrenburg\u2019s daughter, Irina.<\/span><\/p>\n\n

\u201cThe Black <\/em>Book <\/em> should become a memorial placed over the innumerable graves of Soviet people viciously murdered by the German Fascists,\u201d reads a note from the editors of the 1991 edition. It is also, it goes on, \u201cintended to serve as material for the prosecution of the Fascist villains who organised and participated in the murder of millions of old men, women, and children.\u201d <\/p>\n\n

LISTEN <\/strong><\/h5>\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n

Look out for a BBC World Service documentary on the Black <\/em>Book <\/em>of <\/em>Soviet <\/em>Jewry, <\/em>scheduled for later this autumn <\/p>\n\n

<\/p>\n\n

GETTY IMAGES X1, ALAMY X3, CCBY-SA3.0X1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The harrowing history behind the document that laid bare the horrors of the Holocaust<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":18885,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ub_ctt_via":"","purple_page_number":"18","purple_custom_meta_purple_page_number":"18","purple_seq_number":"1","purple_custom_meta_purple_seq_number":"1","purple_source_article":"article_18-1.xml","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_article":"article_18-1.xml","purple_source_issue":"November-2022","purple_custom_meta_purple_source_issue":"November-2022","purple_external_id":"November-2022-18-1","purple_custom_meta_purple_external_id":"November-2022-18-1","purple_issue_code":"|0000090402||","purple_custom_meta_purple_issue_code":"|0000090402||","purple_android_product":"com.im.historyrevealed.113","purple_custom_meta_purple_android_product":"com.im.historyrevealed.113","purple_ios_product":"com.im.historyrevealed.113","purple_custom_meta_purple_ios_product":"com.im.historyrevealed.113","purple_web_product":"","purple_custom_meta_purple_web_product":"","purple_publication_id":"a2288b80-d22c-492c-8b11-acb0804789ee","purple_migrated":"","kt_blocks_editor_width":"","apple_news_api_created_at":"2022-10-03T13:44:39Z","apple_news_article-theme":"","apple_news_api_id":"3b722591-6f79-4875-8fed-05c7303ce638","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2022-10-03T13:44:39Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AO3IlkW95SHWP7QXHMDzmOA","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":true,"apple_news_is_preview":true,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_article_theme":"","apple_news_sections":"[]"},"categories":[16],"tags":[55],"apple_news_notices":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/B3EK1A-edited-e1664117111602.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"6","apple_news_title":""},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/B3EK1A-edited-e1664117111602.jpg",1591,1069,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/B3EK1A-edited-e1664117111602-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/B3EK1A-edited-e1664117111602-300x202.jpg",300,202,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/B3EK1A-edited-e1664117111602-768x516.jpg",768,516,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/B3EK1A-edited-e1664117111602-1024x688.jpg",800,538,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/B3EK1A-edited-e1664117111602-1536x1032.jpg",1536,1032,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/41\/2022\/09\/B3EK1A-edited-e1664117111602.jpg",1591,1069,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"The harrowing history behind the document that laid bare the horrors of the Holocaust","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18572"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19260,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18572\/revisions\/19260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistoryrevealed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}